Fun facts about public domain
So, I've been thinking of the public domain for a bit lately. For those who don't know, the public domain is where a creative work goes when its copyright expires. From there, anyone is allowed to use it and do what they want with it. Originally, if you can believe it, it was only 14 years. Then it was doubled to 28 years. Then it was 28 years, with an additional 28 if you got an extension. Then... Disney got involved. They pushed copyright to "life of the author" + 50 years. In 1998, they extended to it "life of the author" + 70 years. Or, for corporate/anonymous works, it's 120 years after creation or 95 years after original publication... whichever comes first. And they're going to make it longer by the time we get to 2023. They do this in attempt to keep Mickey Mouse out of the public domain forever and ever and ever. As a creator myself, I think that extending anything past the creator's death... is unnecessary. Regardless of whether or not you believe in an afterlife, you can't exactly collect royalties in heaven. As for providing for your family, there are two ways I see it when it comes to creative work: either it made enough money in your lifetime for you to support your family forever, or it would have never made that kind of money. Regardless if I do anything creatively profound or not, I have said many times that everything I ever create becomes public domain the minute that I die. No matter what the law says, I assure you that I'm not going to sue anyone from beyond the grave. It's said that Disney is a bit hypocritical for preventing people from using the creative works of others, because you know... almost all of their movies are directly based on past properties. And yes, it is. Did you know that if copyright laws were always as Disney had made them, the novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland wouldn't have entered the public domain until 1968. The first Disney's Alice in Wonderland came out in... 1951. That's not the only work either. Pinocchio ''would have become public domain in 1960. ''Peter Pan would have become public domain in 2002. An The Jungle Book would have become public domain in 2006. I complain a lot about broken copyright systems, but this is perhaps the worst aspect of our current laws. The point of copyright is to enable more creative works. The way that the public domain works now basically creates a virtual monopoly on certain works. The existence of the public domain is to allow the newer generation to remix and reuse the ideas and the culture of the past. And reusing culture allows to more culture. You want an example? By our current laws, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is copyright infringement. I'm not joking. He based it on a story that was only about 40 years old at that time. For reference, Star Wars Episode IV is approximately 40 years old now. On the other side of things, the song Happy Birthday to You entered the public domain last year. The song was written in 1893. If we had older copyright laws, if you could believe it, The Twilight Zone would have entered the public domain last year in its entirety. You know, that show that has inspired millions of other books, movies, television series, etc? Think of the Goosebumps series of books, more most of the Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror. Episodes of the Twilight Zone have become movies like Poltergeist. As it currently stands, The Twilight Zone enters the public domain at its earliest in... 2054. We are literally losing films. Like... the copies that do exist are disintegrating. No one can copy them because that would be illegal. And no one can ask permission because everyone who can give permission is dead. There is no way that the current situation ensures more creativity. Under better circumstances, I'd tell you all of the glorious new things that you're now allowed to use, it being an entirely new year. The problem with that is the Copyright Term Extension Act which says that no works will enter the public domain in the United States until 2019, be damned what the other laws say. Only unpublished works from people in the United States will enter the public domain. And this year, without that extension act, things written by people who died in 1945 would have become public domain. Once again, history be damned as long as corporations can have a monopoly on our shared culture (and it's not just Disney that has an interest in doing this. Warner-Chappel is still trying to sue people). So... let's go over... how depressing this is. A list of "what it is" and "when it'll go into public domain." If the author is still alive, I'm going with the "95 years after publication" rule. * Pong: The first commercially successful video game, was published in 1972. It will enter the public domain in 2067. I could fill out this list with video games, but all you need to know is that absolutely no video game will be the public domain until 2067. * The works of Dr. Seuss: Dr. Seuss died in 1990. His works will enter the public domain in 2085. * Harry Potter: Going by the "corporate creation" rule of 95 years, the Harry Potter universe will go into public domain at its earliest in 2092. * Star Wars: 2072 * Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: 2032 * Lord of the Rings (book version): 2043 * Psycho: 2050 * Dungeons and Dragons: 2078 * The works of Roald Dahl: 2085. * Pokemon: 2075 (statistically there will be more types of Pokemon than species on Earth by then) * Chronicles of Narnia: 2030 (It's in the public domain in Canada, however) * Scooby-Doo: 2064 * The Simpsons: 2084 * Anything you make right now: 2111. If there's anything I want to do, it's to stop the public domain from being eroded like this. As it's once been said, there's nothing new under the sun. And sometimes a reinterpretation of an older idea can be vastly more interesting than an entirely new one. Category:Miscellaneous